A fatal logical flaw in creationism?

Article 11 of The Treaty of Tripoli, agreed upon by George Washington, approved by President John Adams, and ratified by the Senate without objection in 1797 states, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion".Where do you think ideas of creating a republic, notions of the goodness of the people, of citizen's liberties, and rights came from? Sorry to bust your bubble but the founding fathers didn't open their bibles and come up with all of these ideas, many of them were Deists anyway not Christians. The Enlightenment ideas, (from famous men like John Locke, a Deist) the inherited institutions from Britain, (such as English Common Law) and colonial English tradition (such as requiring the love of the people to rule in a land without a standing army) were the major players in the founding ideas of America. I highly recommend some basic Early American Political Culture and Political Science courses at your local university.I always enjoyed these quotes from the "father" of our constitution, James Madison, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." -- The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774."During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." -- James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.

You're talking about abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution doesn't care how life initially came about. Evolution describes life after it's already been created. For all it matters God could have come down on a magic carpet and farted out life onto Earth.Also, you should do a search for your argument that "Thermodynamics proves evolution wrong". It's been shot down so many times it hurts my head to count it.

Proof of what? That Evolution doesn't require abiogenesis?You're seeking an explanation of the theory itself. A great introduction can be found here. "Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A gene is a hereditary unit that can be passed on unaltered for many generations. The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population." Whether that first cell was created or not by God has no bearing, evolution takes place after life. -- I've never read a biology book that claimed otherwise.I find it odd that you're so zealous with arguing against it when you don't even know what it is. Surely you don't claim a person is bad without even knowing them, do you? In fact, your arguments would be greatly helped by simply knowing what you're arguing against.If you find anything in the Theory of Evolution (TOE) that claims life must have come from non-life for evolution to occur, present it. See my avatar? That's a statue of Moses. Notice something funny? Yep, he has horns. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christians in Europe believed Moses had horns because of a bad translation in their bible. This wasn't corrected until later.So, from this example it appears quite obvious that the translations and reproductions of the bible are not at all guided by God. This means unless you're reading the original bible then you should understand fallacies can exist and that you're not reading "word for word" what your God wrote.Just keep that in mind.

I provided you with sources to look up the quotes if you do not believe me, including the page number. The Treaty of Tripoli is available online if you wish to read Article 11. It confirms that this is a secular nation. Nice copy and paste job from Forbidden -- The guy on the site even states it's just some email floating around, and is wondering if it's false or not.I require sources to back up your remarks for each accusation. One nation under God, we use to mean it.. eh? You do realize that "Under God" was not added to the pledge until 1954 during the Red Scare, don't you? You'll find this type of stuff sprinkled in U.S. history. In that same year Congress passed the law that "In God We Trust" was to be placed on all coins, previously it had only sparsely been placed on some coins in the later 19th century (100 years after the U.S. was founded). In another case, the National Anthem which features the phrase "In God is our trust" wasn't adopted until 1931, again during a red scare.Know your history.

The Moses with horns came from the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible (made by St. Jerome on the orders of Pope Damasus I, 5th century) used for a lengthy time over Europe. The error occurs in Exodus 34:29 and 35 from the word "qaran" which was translated as horns in the LV, I believe it was supposed to be a beam of light (corrected in the KJ). This Bible was not used by some random Pagans, it was the basis of all bibles, for latin, until the Reformation (1500 AD). In fact the statue I have in my avatar is not just some random statue either, it was done by Michelangelo. Many other statues are found through-out Europe. Translation errors were and are possible. Here is a huge problem. Science does not deal with "proofs", math deals with "proofs". I feel you should first get a basic understanding of what science is before saying things like, finding a theory to be a "proven fact of life". This should get you started on understanding what "science" is. "The fact that a theory passed an empirical test does not prove the theory, however. The greater the number of severe tests a theory has passed, the greater its degree of confirmation and the more reasonable it is to accept it. However, to confirm is not the same as to prove logically or mathematically. No scientific theory can be proved with absolute certainty." You didn't copy and paste the information? Yet you just said your cousin emailed it to you. So, you did copy and paste it then, and as the website stated it was an email floating around. Remind yourself who brought up every-single one of these initial arguments. Wouldn't God?Back to original topic: Let me play devil's advocate and ask: If time did not exist, would something need a beginning?[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-22-2004]

Yes, it is also important to recognize this period of the 5th century to the 16th century. This span of roughly 1,000 years is when Europe sees an extremely high amount of illiteracy (along with massive destruction of libraries, books, and knowledge). Most of the people in Europe during this time, by today's Christian standards, would be considered "pagans" because they practiced such things as indulgences (Give money to the church to pay off your sins). But it really wasn't their fault. They couldn't read the bible; they had no way of knowing what to believe other then what they were told by the elite clergy who could read. Not only that but this is before the printing press, bibles weren't exactly in mass circulation. In this time, being literate and being able to obtain a bible to read was extremely rare for the common folk, no one really had a choice of what to believe. That lasted a thousand years, and has only been vanquished in Europe a mere 500 years. I don't care if you used the copy/paste command or physically typed it out, that wasn't the point.Concerning that email, I tracked down where you quoted Madison talking about the Ten Commandments. It is on page 120 of The Myth of Separation, by David Barton. The footnote for where he got this quotation is: Harold K. Lane, Liberty! Cry Liberty! Boston: Lamb and Lamb Tractarian Society, 1939, pp. 32-33. Fedrick Nyneyer, First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association South Holland" Libertarian Press, 1958, pp. 31.Not only are the footnotes from 20th century writers (2nd/3rd sourcing is dubious for this kind of stuff), the quote does not appear in the secondary source that these books claim it came from. One goes as far as to reference the quote to some 20th century spiritual calendar. No known writings of Madison or his biographers have ever mentioned this quote. In short, no one knows where it came from.Doing a search on Google for this nut, Barton, I found an article by Robert Alley (Public Education and the Public Good, William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 1995, pp. 316-318) which describes the hoax of this quote.As you can see, writing down emails you receive without sources is dubious and I advise you to avoid it in the future. When I made those two quotes from Madison they came from two books that were written from primary documents, which I referenced in my post. The quotes came from Madison's own letter, and his essay "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785)" which can be read online and you can find the quote yourself.Edit: Changed "advice" to "advise".[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-22-2004]

It "appears"? We're talking about the 5th century to the 16th century, there is no other church for a thousand years (Protestantism doesn't come around until 1500AD). Of course I'm talking about the Catholic Church. Was that not a given? And I don't care whether you think it is the "true" church or not, that has nothing to do with the conversation.Furthermore I have no idea where you draw the conclusion that this is the extent of "how far back I've studied history". Please clarify because this makes absolutely no sense. We weren't talking about the beginnings of Rome, or the practices of the Gnostics were we? The time I spoke of was the 5th cent. until Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the church door. From there all I commented on was the massive illiteracy that took place during this time, and how rare it was for commoners in Europe to even be able to read a bible. Do you dispute this? First, I don't use "your cousin" as a way of verifying sources. I don't care whether your cousin lies to you or not. The email most likely wasn't even wrote by "your cousin" considering its posted all over the internet from numerous people copy/pasting it. Sorry "my cousin sent it to me and my cousin doesn't lie" is not what we call credible sources. Not to mention that I've already pointed out an error in that email. So then research it, your blank statements of "i know this, i know that" are getting tiresome, and even more pointless. I've already pointed out several areas in which our founding fathers out-right say that America is not founded on any religion, nor should it be. Have you really not read Jefferson's letter of a separation between Church and State?Christianity has played a large role in the beginnings of America; this is undisputed, as I said, the majority were Christian. But the nation was not established on it as has been pointed out. The government is not a "Christian" government. The first amendment guarantees us this. That is not entirely accurate. Most of those you speak of wanted to avoid another setup like the Church of England, not exactly fleeing from the Roman Papacy itself. Though, the construction of the Church of England before its many reforms was close to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.Ironically the Puritans who established themselves for the beginnings of America did the same damn thing of persecuting those who did not believe their way. In order to ensure that Puritanism dominated the colonies, nonconformists had their noses cut off, obtained fines, were banished, etc.. Of course luckily that changed, and all were allowed, including Catholics. I see no reason for that comment. Who has not chosen trust-worthy sources between us so far? I've documented my quotes that date back to primary source material. You've copied an email you got from "your cousin". I took one example out of the email and showed you the hoax of the quote. I dare you to make a post under the Evolution section of this forum with you explaining these "gaps" and how it relates to discrediting evolution.[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-23-2004]

My university affords me the benefits of progressive learning. If you have extra money/time I highly suggest attending a local college. You'll find many things you learn in highschool about history are wrong, as I did in my first year of college. For instance, the whole "Most people thought you would sail off the ocean until Columbus proved them wrong!" notion is totally false, and I was amazed my previous highschool history teacher taught it among other things. Yes, "interpretation is the mother of arguments", hehe. I'm not claiming "you all" are the same. What I did claim is what all historians that I know of accept, that there wasn't any other church, other then the Catholic church, around in Europe during the 5th cent. until the 16th cent. Whether you want to believe it to be a "false church" or not is up to you, I do not care. When have I said anything like that? I would accept the argument that the first "Christian churches" were the "underground churches" before Rome took over Christianity. That's fine by me. Err.. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ's teachings. The Jews don't believe that Jesus was the Christ. How could you label them the first Christians? Again, I'd really like it if you'd post this in the form of an argument in the Evolution section of the forum. There is already a barrage of off-topic posts here.[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-22-2004]

I certainly agree with the division of the church as pertaining to the separation of the East and the West churches. The whole rejection of things like purgatory and the papacy by the East certainly worked to divide them.However, this isn't really my point. I'm classifying them together based on what Des's personal idea of "paganism" is. They both were extremely focused on liturgy (ritualistic forms of worship) and icons (Des makes a point about this). Both churches, from what I remember, advocated prayer for the dead, and that the living can aid in the salvation of the dead. Such things that both shared is why I grouped them together in reference to Des's idea of who "true Christians" are, which I'm assuming is mostly grounded from the ideas of Protestantism.I feel that my use of simply labeling them all as "Catholics" or "Holy Romans" was very miss-leading on my part and I apologize (edit: appologize changed to apologize), but for the argument I group them under one entity.I hope that clears up my meaning towards the issue. Haha, even Lam? Just kidding Lam.[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-23-2004]

Hehe, nitpick all you want, I'll sound less like a buffoon when trying to convey my meaning. The word "ironic" in this sentence was used in reference to the persecuted becoming the persecutors. You are correct of course with regards to religious tolerance. Such ideas really didn't take root until after the Thirty Years War in the early 1600s. Sorry if I wasn't that clear in using the word "ironic".